Pope Leo XIV Addresses Tensions with President Trump Amid Africa Tour

"...extraordinary overnight social media tirade..."

"...highly unusual step of calling out the Trump White House directly..."

"...extraordinary broadside against him..."

"...unprecedented clash between the first American pope and a US president..."

"...known for his gentle, low-key style..."

"...inner steel..."

"...willingness to speak out in forthright terms..."

"...rarely do..."

"...appeared to allude to..."

"...cut through to a US audience..."

"...poker face..."

"...careful, deliberate style..."

"...arguably gives his words greater weight..."

"...delivered a speech that had global ramifications..."

"...dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth..."

"...bubbling away..."

"...caused upset..."

"...striking..."

"...hard to see the pope making a visit home while Trump is president..."

"...weighed into the row..."

"...striking..."

"...eagerness to frame the conflict in the Middle East in religious terms..."

"...striking..."

"...argued in an editorial..."

"...insisted that Leo XIV..."

"...faced with the madness of escalating conflict and disproportionate spending on rearmament..."

"...continuing along the path opened by his predecessors..."

"...calling for peace, dialogue, and negotiation with both realism and prophetic clarity..."

"...likely to be taken more seriously by the Vatican..."

"...aligned himself with a cadre of extreme right-wing philosophers, theologians, and pundits..."

"...claim to be the authentic interpreters of Augustine’s City of God..."

"...undeniable expertise in Augustine’s thought..."

"...poses a direct threat to the efforts of the vice president and his post-liberal friends..."

"...present themselves to Catholics as authoritative interpreters of the Church’s social and political teachings..."

"...deemed impossible..."

"...would not want to ally the Church with the world’s dominant power..."

"...changed how the cardinals viewed the US on the world stage..."

"...opened the door for them to break with tradition..."

"...made him an attractive figure..."

"...historic decision..."

"...not dissimilar to that of the 1978 conclave..."

"...elected John Paul II..."

"...first Polish pope..."

"...first non-Italian pontiff in 400 years..."

"...chosen at the height of the Cold War..."

"...would go onto play a crucial role in the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe..."

"...reminds me of Harold Macmillan..."

"...among the three institutions no sensible person should attack is the Vatican..."

"...view this through the lens of history..."

"...knowing that empires come and go..."